Dec. 1, 2009, marks the 54th anniversary of the day Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, to make room for a white passenger. Many depictions of Parks show her as elderly, or frail, when in fact she was 42 years old and “tired of giving in.” Her subsequent arrest led to the beginning of the Montgomery bus boycott, during which African-Americans and some whites walked to work, school, church, and everywhere else they needed to go. City buses ran nearly empty for a total of 382 days before the Supreme Court’s ban of Jim Crow laws made segregation illegal in December 1956. Some of the greatest names in the civil rights movement such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., were involved in the boycott.

From Boycott Blues: How Rosa Parks Inspired a Nation by Andrea Davis Pinkney, illustrated by Brian Pinkney

The illustration pictured here is by Brian Pinkney for the 2008 work Boycott Blues: How Rosa Parks Inspired a Nation, written in rhythmic text by Andrea Davis Pinkney and published by Greenwillow Books. Other recent works for children in the Dodd Research Center’s holdings include Nikki Giovanni’s Rosa, illustrated by Bryan Collier and published by Henry Holt in 2005, and The Bus Ride that Changed History: the Story of Rosa Parks, by Pamela Duncan Edwards, illustrated by Danny Shanahan and published by Houghton Mifflin in 2005.

The 2009 Raab Associates Prize in Illustration was another opportunity for the Dodd Research Center to partner with the School of Fine Arts and Professor Cora Lyn Deibler.  Now in its 11th year, the competition which was initiated in 1999 by alumni Susan Salzman Raab and her husband David, gives students of illustration a poem to illustrate, which again this year was an original work by Jane Yolen.    This year’s winner is Katelyn Fox.

The poem is as follows:

Bug Games
Grasshopper,
Dragonfly,
Lady bug,
Flea,

How many
Bugs
Hopscotch
On a tree?

Centipedes,
Crickets,
Earwigs,
Flies,

Who plays
Tag,
Who wins the
Prize?

Cabbage Worm,
Beetle,
Earwig,
Grub,

When games
Are over,
Who’s first
In the tub?

Katelyn Fox, UConn President Mike Hogan, John Allie

Today is day two of the CT Children’s Book Fair and it’s amazing to think that we have been a part of this for 18 years!  So why is it that we are still doing it, along with so many of our original volunteers?  The Connecticut Children’s Book Fair is a unique opportunity for the Dodd Research Center to reach out and be involved in promoting literacy.  Reading to children for just a small amount each day nets amazing results.  It helps them open doors to a big, exciting world and develop a love of stories and poems.  When children become readers, their world is forever wider and richer.

Over the 18 years of the Fair, we have moved three times, had conferences for teachers, character breakfasts, speakers for 5th year students in the Neag School of Education, and partnered with wonderful organizations such as the UConn Co-op and School of Fine Arts.   We have met over 350 absolutely wonderful authors and illustrators, and forged relationship that have helped us with programming and enrichment of the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection archives.

Armistice Day bonfire, Connecticut Agricultural College, 1919

This year marks the culmination of the University of Connecticut Alumni Association’s yearlong effort to craft a fitting tribute to honor our alumni who have fallen while serving in the armed forces of our nation.  In November 2008, the Ultimate Sacrifice Memorial was dedicated.  Located on the Lawn to the east of the Wilbur Cross Building, the Memorial is constructed of brick, limestone and marble, and features a patio and handcrafted “eternal flame.” The marble headstone is drawn from the same quarry used for Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial. The headstone is a replica of that used at Arlington National Cemetery.

The Roll of Honor was unveiled and dedicated during Reunion weekend activities on June 6, 2009.  The ceremony, which included the reading of  the names of 131 University of Connecticut alumni collected to date, was especially poignant as it was also the 65th anniversary of D-Day, the allied invasion of Europe during World War II.  The list of names is a collaborative effort of many people but the resources available in the University Archives provided a substantial portion as well as assisting in the research for the profiles intended for the planned website.

On November 10, 2009, as part of this year’s Veteran’s Day Observance, the Alumni Association announces the Roll of Honor website (https://www.foundation.uconn.edu/about-the-foundation/roll-of-honor/) which provides a history of the project, photographs of associated events, the list of the fallen and information on how to submit additional names.

And to all our veterans, alumni or not, Thank you.

“What’s in a brain?”

Norman D. Stevens, Director of University Libraries Emeritus at UConn, is, among other things, an amateur library historian with an interest in such subjects as the image of the librarian, library humor, and what he defined as librariana. In his book A Guide to Collecting Librariana (1986), he identified that term as “Those artifacts, including but by no means limited to printed materials, that depict any aspect of librarians, librarianship, and/or libraries; such artifacts, which are most typically of an ephemeral nature, may be those produced or used by librarians or libraries as well as those produced and used by others; they include, in particular,representations of librarians, librarianship, and/or libraries in the popular culture of society.” That book grew out of his own collection of over 25,000 postcards of library buildings, and much other material, that is now housed in the Canadian Centre of Architecture in Montreal. While building that collection, Dr. Stevens developed a broader interest in postcards and has established contacts with numerous major postcard collectors and collections. That led him to edit Postcards in the Library: Invaluable Visual Resources (1995). As part of that process, he conducted a thorough analysis of major scholarly articles in a number of fields that were based on the use of postcards.

To talk more about this, Norman will be the featured speaker for the UConn Humanities Institute Faculty Lecture Series on Wednesday, November 4 at 4:00pm.  His presentation, located here in the Dodd Center’s John P. McDonald Reading Room, will focus on his own experiences with using postcards for research purposes, his knowledge of substantial postcard collections, and the extent to which such seemingly unimportant materials can be truly valuable research resources. The program will conclude with a short visual presentation of postcards depicting books and reading from another of his collections.

Dorothy Q. Thomas spoke to an engaged crowd at the 18th Sackler Distinguished Lecture in Human Rights last week.  The lecture, titled “Are American’s Human: An Ex-Patriot’s Guide to the Future of Progressive Politics in the U.S.” also served as the keynote to the Human Rights Institute’s conference, “Human Rights in the USA.”  

Thomas, a self-described progressive, gave the audience a personal, and at times moving look at the journey that has shaped her into the highly respected independent human rights consultant of today.   Those personal insights, coupled with her undeniable sense of humor, engaged the crowd into a conversation about what it means to be progressive in the United States.  Ms. Thomas, who often posed questions to the crowd, asked if a progressive could also be a patriot? 

She used her personal stories, including the early days of her professional career working for the civil rights movement up through today where she works on behalf of human rights in the United States, to challenge the crowd to consider what being a patriot means, how the continued struggle for human rights can be a catalyst for inclusion of differing views, and whether those with progressive views will be able to find friendlier times ahead where they are not to be made to feel like traitors to their own land.  At the end of the lecture, a first year law school student who is also serving in the military, thanked Ms. Thomas for her views.  As a member of the military, he said, it is difficult to be progressive and still be accepted by your peers.

Join us Thursday, October 22 when Dorothy Q. Thomas joins us as the 17th Raymond & Beverly Sackler Distinguished Lecturer.

Ms. Thomas is a 2008 visiting fellow at the London School of Economics’ Centre for the Study of Human Rights. She is a 1998 MacArthur Fellow and a 1995 Bunting Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. In 1998 she received the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award from President Bill Clinton.

Until January 2007, Thomas was the senior program advisor to the U.S. Human Rights Fund, a collaborative grant making initiative that supports domestic human rights work in the United States. From 1990 – 1998, she served as the founding director of the Human Rights Watch Women’s Rights Division. She is a member of the Board of the Ms. Foundation for Women and sits on the advisory boards of the ACLU Human Rights Project, the American Constitution Society Human Rights Working Group and the Human Rights Watch U.S. Program. Thomas speaks frequently on human rights in the United States and has published widely on the topic, including most recently “Against American Supremacy: Rebuilding a Culture of Respect for Human Rights in the United States,” in Bringing Human Rights Home , Praeger, (2008). Other speeches and publications include “Ain’t I American?: Women’s Rights, Human Rights and US Identity in the 21st Century,” The Helen Pond McIntyre Lecture, Barnard College, October 30, 2007.

Ms. Thomas is a graduate of Georgetown University, which awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1995.

William R. Davis Courtroom
Starr Hall
UConn Law School
4:00pm

Bill Berkson

Join us tomorrow, October 14, at 4:00pm for a reading by poet, critic, small press publisher and sometime curator Bill Berkson.  The event marks a recent addition of Berkson manuscripts and personal papers to the Dodd Research Center’s literary collections and Berkson’s recently published book of poetry Portrait and Dream: New & Selected Poems (Coffee House Press, 2009). 

The Dodd Research Center holds the comprehensive archive of Bill Berkson’s papers, including literary manuscripts, letters, records of his small press Big Sky, photographs, broadsides, and rare publications.  The archive spans from 1960 to the present day and documents the poet’s remarkable body of work, his collaborations in and among the realms of visual art, media, and literature, and his affinities with poets and poetics of the New York School.

The event is free and open to the public.  Students, faculty and staff are welcome.  An exhibit of materials from the Berkson papers will be on display.  Refreshments immediately following.  Contact Melissa Watterworth, Curator of Literary Collections, for more information.

Please join the us for the October film for the 2009-2010 Human Rights Film Series: Human Rights in the USA.

 Film:  “The Least of These” (2009)
Directed by Clark and Jesse Lyda

Tuesday, October 13, 2009
4:00 pm, Konover Auditorium

The Least of These offers a look at one of the most controversial aspects of American immigration policy:  family detention.  

The detention of immigrant children inside the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, a former medium-security prison in Texas now operated by a private corporation leads to controversy when three activist attorneys discover troubling conditions at the facility, as families await asylum hearings or deportation proceedings.  This compelling documentary film explores the role – and limits – of community activism, and considers how American rights and values apply to the least powerful among us.

What a wonderful day!  Today the Committee to Protect Journalists received the fourth Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights.  We were honored to have Joel Simon, Executive Director and Michael Massing, Co-Founder of the Committee to Protect Journalists join us for a day of discussions around freedom of the press and its importance to all of us.  Other special guests that shared in the day’s program included author and journalist Mariane Pearl, author Terry Gould, and Nina Ognianova, CPJ’s  Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator.

All of our guests were so accommodating, taking the time to talk to students, faculty, staff, members of the press, and friends of the Center.  The festivities began with a breakfast for students, where they got the opportunity to have an informal conversation with our guests, with topics ranging from the state of journalism today to the role of the press in the struggle for human rights. 

The award itself was given to CPJ by Senator Christopher Dodd, with UConn President Mike Hogan as our master of ceremonies.  The crowd of over 250 guests were told of the suffering that journalists from around the globe have endured for their passion to report the news for those who are otherwise not heard, and in many cases the ultimate sacrifice that they paid.  We heard of the work that CPJ does on behalf of journalists worldwide and most importantly we heard hope.  Hope from the belief that deep down we all share a common value, that we are all entitled to basic rights and freedoms and when those are violated the rule of law prevails.  This is something that Senator Thomas J. Dodd championed for and that hope continues to bring us all together to make our world a better place.

Stay tuned for pictures of the event!

Books geared for children are often the most challenged.  Today’s blog entry is In The Night Kitchen, #25 on ALA’s top 100 list of challenges between 1990-1999.   In this case, beloved children’s author Maurice Sendak has raised eyebrows when the stories’ main character Mickey enters the surreal world that Sendak is known for, and loses his pajama bottoms. 

The focus of the book is how brave and resourceful young Mickey is when he falls into a mixing bowl full of cake batter and is accidentally baked.  By celebrating creative dreams and facing fears,  Sendak takes a scary experience for children (spooky sounds from downstairs) and turns it into a wonderfully delightful story for children of all ages.   And for the naked boy in the story, is there anybody who has had a little boy that doesn’t run around the house naked now and then?

Some libraries have drawn pants, diapers, fig leaves and even used White Out to cover the parts of the booked deemed offensive.  An unaltered copy of the book can be found in the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection – come judge it for yourself.

Archives are often full of banned and challenged books, offering great resources for research.  So in honor of Banned Books Week 2009, Celebrating The Freedom to Read, we will offer you a week long look into some of those books.

Daddy's Roommate written by Michael Willhoite, 1990